ORIGINAL BURN — EP02
"Empty Glass (Burned Strings)"
A song for the ones who kept singing long after the stage was gone.
The dust never settles in Tube Haven — it just circles slower when the music stops.
Jake Barron sits in the old sound pit, his back to the shattered mural. The paint’s peeled so deep the past can’t quite hold its shape anymore — but the silhouettes are still there. Lee the V. Zepman. 9-Toed Joe. And Jake himself — larger than life, arms raised mid-solo, forever frozen in their prime.
He doesn’t look at them. Not yet.
His boot’s off. His bottle’s warm. And the amp crate he's using as a throne buzzes faintly, like it remembers the days when this room rang out with something electric, something loud enough to hold back the Wasted silence.
He raises the glass — not to drink, not really. Just to watch it swirl. There’s his eye in the reflection, caught in the ripple, broken into fragments like a face left on pause for too long. The light bends around it, glitchy and sour. The drink sees him clearer than he sees himself.
Behind him, a glitch-ripple flickers — Manny’s outline, pulled from half-dead feedlines or Jake’s broken memory. Not real. Not alive. But defiant as ever.
Jake flinches. He smashes the bottle, and in that split second before it hits the mural, the splash blooms into a warped music note. Beautiful. Then gone.
He storms the corridor. Lee the V follows at a distance, as always — expression unreadable, one hand tucked inside his coat like a promise not yet broken.
In the lounge, Jake stares at old screens. On them, a younger version of himself struts and snarls, cable-wrapped and wired into the crowd’s roar. That Jake still exists. Somewhere. But he’s buried deep.
Now the pit is empty. The spotlight flickers like a dying firefly. Jake steps under it — not to perform, just to see if it still works. He lifts his hand and the beam fractures into glitchdust, falling like artificial snow.
Memories collide in fragments. A laugh from the old crew. A mic check. A strum. A stage dive. Then silence.
Jake screams into the void and the pit answers with a glitchwave burst — like it’s been waiting. Lee flinches. Somewhere in that sound, something ancient stirs. Something watching.
Later, Jake tunes a rusted guitar in a backroom full of ghosts. He sees a figure in the mirror — not his reflection. Something taller. Cloaked. Glitch-wrapped. Watching.
He turns away, ashamed.
But the storm’s already started. Outside, the sky fractures in digital lightning. Inside, the lights buzz awake.
One more time.
Jake steps into the pit. The mic stand’s still there, upright now, waiting. He doesn’t touch it — not yet. But the crowd ghosts are gathering. The wires are humming.
On a monitor in the corner, Manny’s face flickers into view. He doesn’t say anything.
Neither does Jake.
But the fist clenches. And the screen goes dark.
